Many mobile phones include a built-in digital camera, such as a digital still camera (DSC). Mobile phones with a built-in camera are also commonly known as camera-phones. Some camera-phones also include an electronic flash unit to permit a user of a camera-phone to take high quality pictures in a variety of lighting conditions.
There is increasing interest in using white-light Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) as flash units in camera-phones. This is due, in part, to the fact that white-light LEDs are significantly increasing their efficiency. Another factor that is of increasing interest in white-light LEDs is that miniaturization of xenon tube flash units has not been as successful as mobile phone makers require for some applications. For example, the Philips Lumiled Lighting Company publishes a reference design DR01 for using white-light LEDs in DSC and camera-phone flash applications. The Lumileds Lighting reference design DR01 is for a flash module based on a Luxeon® LED technology (a “Luxeon Flash”). The Luxeon Flash module is a unit that has an LED chip mounted to a submount. The submount, in turn, is directly mounted to a printed circuit board.
A disadvantage of using a white-light LED as a flash in a compact consumer device, such as a camera-phone, is that it increases costs and requires some extra space that must be taken into account in designing a phone. A conventional white-light LED flash unit, such as a Luxeon Flash, is an extra unit that increases the number of manufacturing and packaging steps required to fabricate a consumer camera device such as a camera-phone.
Therefore in light of the above-described problem, the apparatus, system, and method of the present invention was developed.